TENNESSEE WILLIAMS: ATTITUDES TOWARD LOVE AND DECAY IN
BLANCHE DU BOIS AND MRS. STONE*
SIGRID RENAUX
This short essay 1 is an attempt to deal with some seminal aspects
in the personalities of Blanche Du Bois and Mrs. Stone, the central
characters of Tennessee Williams' play A Streetcar Named Desire2 and
his novelette The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone3, respectively. As the
story of both the play and the novelette are fairly well known — the
first about Blanche, a, neurotic woman and her romantic dream world
m contrast to the realism and primitivism of her brother-in-law Stanley,
in a New Orleans slum; the second about an aging actress and her
last ignoble love afair with a Roman gigolo — we shall start by commenting briefly on our first impressions of both works, their setting,
their precedent action and plot, in order to better grasp their interrelationship with our main subject — the analysis of Blanche's and
Mrs. Stone's attitudes (as older women in contrast to the other characters surrounding them) toward love and decay.
The very first impression w e receive from reading Streetcar and
Roman Spring is that the first is successful as a play, while the other
ist not wholly successful, neither as a novelette — which it is — nor
as a play — which it resembles, in structure and plot. Going back to
that traditional division between plays written to be acted and plays
written to be read, we could classify Streetcar in the first and Roman
Spring in the second category.
1
2
3
S e m i n í r i o apresentado à Prof." Dr. Winifred Kera S t j v e n s , no curso de Teatro
Americano Pós-Guerra (U.S.P., 1972).
WILLIAMS, T. A Streetcar Named Desire. Harmondr worth, Penguin Book, 1947.
p. 113 to 226.
Ibid. The Roman Spring of Mr». Stone. N e w York, A New Directions Book, 1950.
148 pp.
( A l l references and quotations from both books w i l l be taken from the editions
above, indicated by page numbers cited in parentheses).
LETRAS (28) 1979
'115
Another impression we experience is that not only the main characters but even the secondary characters in Streetcar are real people,
while in Roman Spring, with the exception of Mrs. Stone, characters
seem to be more clichés of gigolos and pimps than actual types of
degeneration; we realize the latter are as unreal as in a nightmare,
preying on Mrs. Stone, while in Streetcar the very reality is a nightmare for Elar.ch:, a nightmare she does not want to accept.
Both works have, at the beginning and at the end, the same
setting: Blanche arrives and leaves New Orleans in the evening —
for she did not accept her brutal surroundings — and Mrs. Stone is
standing on a balcony in her palazzo and a stranger is looking at her;
at the end, she is throwing him the keys to her residence — thus
accepting degradation. In Streetcar, few changes of scene take place:
a corner building, the kitchen, the bedroom and flashbacks of plantation life, marriage, and family deaths in Blanché's irregular life; in
Roman Spring, Mrs. Stone's balcony, her bedroom and living room,
a street in Rome, a tailor's room, plus flashbacks of her childhood,
her career and her marriage.
The precendent action is important both in Streetcar as in Roman
Spring, for it gives us a clue as to the personalities of Blanche and
Mrs. Stone. The precedent action is always present in their minds: for
Blanche, the plantation Belle Rêve (which represents security to her)
and for Mrs. Stone, her actress career (which meant fame and an objective in life). Thus, although the visible setting is New Orleans and
Rome, the invisible setting — the past — is present in the form of
Belle Rêve for Blanche and New York for Mrs. Stone.Both come from
this invisible setting to their new surroundings, in a desperate
search to better their lives and forget the negative aspects of their
past, but the new environment is hostile to them. They seem to wither
even more, out of their native surroundings: the new setting is too
brutalized for Blanche, and she succumbs by not accepting it, whereas Mrs. Stone is surrounded by decadent Italians and she willfully
accepts this degradation at the end, to be free from the "drift" she
feels, when alone. In a way, she is the innocent American being corrupted by old Italy, as in Henry James' novels.
The plot in Streetcar cen'ers around Blanche and in Roman Spring
around Mrs. Stone: both search for balance, but they are incapable
of reconciling inclination and moral obligation, and thus both suggest
82
LETRAS (28) 1979
dramatic figures. They need the illusion of being loved and admired,
in order to continue living, and frequently the tragic effect lies in
these illusions being destroyed by those that surround them. In Blanche's case, Stanley and Mitch let her know the bitter truth about
herself, while in Roman Spring, it is Paolo, the gigolo, who tells Mrs.
Stone the truth. Both women feel lost and frustrated in love, which in
part accounts for their nymphomania.
Their attitudes toward love becomes apparent in different ways,
thus revealing complex personalities. As a start, one feels that their
basic attitude toward love is wrong: Blanche, having married a homosexual when she was still very young, felt incapable of giving him
help, for though she loved him deeply, she also wanted protection
from him, while it was he who needed help from her. He kills himself, when she finds out about it. Having fasted too much, too soon,
Blanche felt empty, and after having lost her family by death and
her plantation by their debts, she has run for protection "from under
one leaky roof to ano;her leaky roof" for men "don't even
admit your existence unless they are making love to you. And you've
got to have your existence admitted by someone, if you're going to
have someone's protection" (169). Thus, from this early disillusion and
the disastrous loss of Belle Rêve, she begins her nymphomaniac career, in order to find protection and to feel young and loved. Her
final affair with a seventeen-year-old boy is just another example
cf what in Roman Spring the newspaperwoman says to Mrs. Stone,
on the balcony scene at the beginning: "Isn't it odd ( . . . ) how women
of our age begin all at once to look for beauty in our male partners?"
(14). But while Blanche has to sell herself in order to receive "love",
Mrs. Stone buys her lovers, for she can afford it.
Mrs. Stone's marriage to an impotent, who saw in her a young
mother, while she saw an adult child in him, is also basically wrong.
But Mrs. Stone never had any real feelings for others, just for herself.
Her vulture-like personality is just the outward aspect of her exclusiveness in love, for she wants to feel she is the only one, with no
rivals, just like when she was a, famous actress and always managed
to remain so, even at the price of harming her partners. This rapacity and her resemblance to a prey bird is emphasized in many passages of the novel. But at the end, w e see that it is the others who
prey on her — Paolo, the comtessa-, tlie stranger, while in Streetcar,
LETRAS (28) 1979
'115
the "apes" take over at the end, as personified in Stanley. Blanche
arouses our emotions by her complete lack of will power, for she
took to drinking, whenever possible, while Mrs. Stone's tremendous
will power only slacks at the end, when she feels the drift taking
over her. She is too aware of what has happened to herself to arouse
our emotions. Her great will power is also shown in the way she
succeeded in her phenomenal career as an actress, at the expense
of others, as mentioned.
Mrs. Stone's "Roman spring", or the discovery of physical love,
on an almost animal level, reminds us also of the ancient pagan fertility r'rtes, when a sacrifice was offered to a god. In Mrs. Stone's case,
it seems as if ín order to bs granted the gif oh the physical love of
a young man, she would have to pay with her dignity to appease
the gods. Blanche sacrificed herself for the past she represented, but
this past is no longer real to the people who surround her now. She
wants too much: physical love, plus romance and gentleness. Her
values are lost, and what she thinks she has to substitute her loss of
beauty, such as beauty of the mind and tenderness of heart, are not
really appreciated where she is — at her sister's home. Mrs. Stone's
marriage to a "plump little man that looked like an Easter bunny" (14)
was regarded by a friend as done expressly "rn order to avoid copulation" (15), so her search for physical love now seems almost as a redress for something she had missed in her youth. But she simply is
not capable of giving something of herself to others and when her
values are lost — beauty, career, marriage of convenience — she has
nothing to replace them with, except her millions.
Blanche's and Mrs. Stone's attitudes toward decay provide us
with further glimpses into their personalities. Both women are characterized by a loss of beauty and youth, although this is somenwhat
relative, for Mrs. Stone is already fifty, while Blanche is thirty. Mrs.
Stone, even made up for the stage, suddenly relaizes she cannot play
Juliet anymore, whereas B'anche realizes she cannot look so fresh
as sixteen, because of the hectic life she has led. So both have take.i
to fanciful dressing, to keep up the illusion of youth. But we have to
remember that Mrs. Stone is an American millionaire, while Blanche
is poor. Thus, Mrs. Stone can afford expensive things, "now spending
a great deal of money on clothes at the Roman branches of the great
Parisian dressmakers. In the days of her unfaded beauty she had preferred simple clothes and a simple ring, but her taste had now shifted
to gowns and jewelry that seemed inspired by the baroque façades of
Bernini" (115-6). Blanche, on the other hand, wears rhinestones, flo84
LETRAS (28) 1979
wered prints, a "soiled and crumpled white satin evening gown and
a pair of scuffed silver slippers with brilliants set in their heels" (208).
Mrs. Stone resembles Snow White's stepmother queen, always
asking the mirror if she is still the most beautiful of all; Blanche gives
us the impression of imagining herself being Snow White — as her
name suggests — waiting for a, prince to take her home. Both women
recur constantly to the mirror, although both know it tells the truth.
Mrs. Stone is dismayed on a brilliant spring morning facing the mirror
in her bedroom
<
with the sort of realism that still redeemed her from being
a commonplace person. She was obliged to witness that
her face in the mirror had not weathered the critical period iust passed through so triumphantly as had the organs
that kept her living. Her body has flown like a powerful
bird through and above the entangling branches of the
past few years, but her face now exhibited the record
of the flight (115).
But by far the best passage illustrating the hold of a mirror over
a young person comes from Paolo. Mrs. Stone has just finished dressing herself in a new costume, a dinner gown of golden taffeta covered with ivory lace, and rings and a. necklace of pearls and topaz,
when Paolo bursts into her bedroom, wearing the new flannel suit
she had had made specially for him, by a very expensive tailor:
It was perhaps unreasonable of her to expect Paolo to be
interested in her own finery (...) But Paolo's agreeable surprise was reserved for his own appearance. He rushed toward the mirror as if it were water and his clothes were
on fire. Without a glance in Mrs. Stone's direction, he gazed and preened in the glass, and finding it somewhat
crowded by iheir two reflections, he murmured Excuse me
and gave her a slight push to one side. Then he turned
his back to the long mirror and, looking over his shoulder,
he lifted the jacket over his hips so that they both, she and
he, could admire the way that the flannel adhered to ;he
classic callipygian shape of his firm young behind (116-7).
Blanche, contrastingly, when she meets her sister Stella at the
beginning of the play and the latter remarks how well she is looking,
answers: "You see I still have that awful vanity about my looks even
now that my looks are slipping! (She laughs nervously and glances
at Stella for reassurance)" (123). One feels that she does not wholly
LETRAS (28) 1979
'115
believe that her looks are slipping, and that she needs a confirmation
from Stella. Later, in the outfit mentioned above, Blanche seems to
be ready for a sacrifice — Stanley rapes her — and she takes a last
look into the mirror. As the stage directions indicate, "Tremblingly
she lifts the hand mirror for a closer inspection. She catches her breath
and slams the mirror face down with such violence that the glass
cracks. She moans a, little and attempts to rise" (280).
Both Blanche and Mrs. Stone also shun daylight, because it will
reveal their real age to others, while the mirror reveals it. just to
themselves:
In Mrs. Stone there was a certain grandeur which had replaced her former beauty. The knowledge that her beauty
was lost had come upon her recently and it was still occasionally forgotten. It could be forgotten, sometimes, in
the silk-filtered dusk of her bedroom where the mirrors
disclosed an image in cunningly soft focus (7-8).
She knows her beauty cannot stand daylight any longer, so she recurs to dim illumination. Blanche, w h e n she arrives in Stella's house,
after they have embraced each other, says to her sister:
Now, then, let me
Stella, no, no, no,
rested! And turn
I won't be looked
look at you. But don't you look at me,
not till later, not till I've bathed and
that over-light off! Turn that offl
at in this merciless glare! (120).
But this fügt from light cannot last forever, for neither of them.
Mrs. Stone knows this, but Blanche refuses to compromise. In Roman
Spring, while Mrs. Slone and Paolo sun-bathed on her terrace, she
noticed that
her body turned golden, but the gold was not perfect. It
contained tiny creases which would not disappear beneath
the oily fingers of the masseuse who visited her daily,- (...)
these tinier signatures of time, little creases, stayed on
her, ineffaceably" (66).
And she could not bear to look at Paolo, beside her-.
He was too lustrous. The sun leapt down the air toward
him like a child toward a child, and she felt ignored and
excluded (as later on with the mirror, as mentioned) and
usually she would reach down to cover herself, outcast,
86
LETRAS (28) 1979
ashamed, in the company of such affinities as Paolo's nude
flesh and the sun (66).
On another occasion Mrs. Stone is walking on the streets in Rome
and receives a similar shock from daylight:
A number of times lately Mrs. Stone had gone out on the
street in make-up applied almost as artfully as that she
had worn on the stage, but Roman sunlight was not in
sympathy with the deceit, and she was aware of receiving
glances that were not merely critical but sometimes mocking. She had her ha,'rr tinted a darker shade, almost auburn, and she took to wearing hats with very wide brims
of gossamer material that filtered the light in a flattering
way, but at the back of her mind was continually the shadow of a suspicion ont yet resolved into thought that something more radical than any of these expedients must
rather sooner ihan later be contrived to prepare her for
that long crossing of time that apparently still lay before
her... (115).
Blanche is characterized by her uncertain manner as well as by
her white clothes as resembling a moth, an insect that cannot stand
daylight either, just like her delicate beauty, as the stage directions indicate (117). We also have a very revealing scene between Mitch —
Stanley's friend — and her when he remarks that he has never seen
her in the light, nor in the afternoon. He realizes he has never had
a real good look at her:
Mitch: Let's turn the light on here.
Blanche (fearfully): Light? Which light? What for?
Mitch: This one with the paper thing on it (He tears the
paper off the light bulb. She utters a frightened gasp).
(203)
The paper lantern suggests a magical atmosphere to Blanche, for it
hides the truth of her age from others. She goes on saying to Mitch:
Blanche: I don't want realism.
Mitch: Naw, I guess not.
Blanche: I'll tell you what I want. Magici (Mitch laughs.)
Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that ;o people. I misrepresent
things to them. I don't tell the truth. I tell what ought to
be truth. And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for
87LETRAS(28) 1979
it! -
Don't turn the light on! (203-4)
!n this manner, 1 his speech reveals not just her age and face to Mitch,
but also her bare soul to us .
The presence of the past is another means of presenting Blanche's and Mrs. Stone's attitudes toward decay. In the novelette, the
past is expressed through exposition, while in the play, through the
characters. Thus, in Roman Spring
Three events of great importance and impact had occurred
within a year of each other in Mrs. Stone's life. They were
the abandonment of her profession and her husband's
death and the interval of a woman's life when the ovarian
cycle is cut off. Each event had been a severe shock in
itself and the three together had given her the impression
that she was now leading an almost posthumous existence (42).
The word "posthumous" is relevant to the understanding not only of
AArs. Stone but also of Blanche, because the past they bring to theîr
new environment — Belle Rêve and Mrs. Stone's career — is dead for
those that surround them now. Thus, loss of beauty in Mrs. Stone is
followed by her resigning her artistic career and by the death of
her husband.
Blanche has had these losses, too, although much earlier in life.
But the action line is inversed in her case: disillusion in marriage, loss
of the plantation, an irregular life leading to loss of beauty. Even the
name Belle Rêve suggests that everything is only a dream. In the
play, w e know about Blanche's past through herself and through
Stanley. As Blanche says to Stella,
(...) How in hell do you think all that sickness and dying
was paid for? Death is expensive, Miss Stella! (...) Why,
the Grim Reaper had put up his tent on our doorstep!...
Stella, Bele Rêve was his headquarters! Honey — thafs
how it slipped through my fingers! (127)
To Stanley, Blanche explains the loss of Belle Rêve:
(...) piece by piece, our improvident grandfathers and father and uncles and brothers exchanged the land for their
epic fornications — to put it plainly! (...) Till finally all that
was left (...) was the house itself and about twenty acres
of ground, including a graveyard, to.which now all but
Stella and I have retreated (140).
88
LETRAS (28) 1979
In this manner, comparing the attitudes of Mrs. Stone and Blanche toward the past, one sees that the first, already in middle age, has
achieved some detachment and self-knowledge and accepts life on
its new terms after Paolo leaves her. Blanche, having had those disillusions very early in life, has no detachment in analysing the
events, no self-knowledge, and refuses to accept life on its new terms.
Both keep the symbol of their past, nevertheless.- Mrs. Stone, photographs from her actress career; Blanche, love letters in a box.
Loss of dignity is another symptom of their decay. If Mrs. Stone
was perceptive enough to see ihrough her actress life —
with such merciless clarity, such clarity as that which had
allowed her to admit to herself that her talent had been
second-rate and that the pediment of her career had been
youthful beauty which w a s now removed from her. It
takes a kind of intelligence to acknowledge such a merciless truth concerning oneself and even more to survive
the acknowledgement of it (114)
— she also took dignity for granted, in the past:
In the arrogance of her beauty and her prestige in two
worlds, theatrical and social, that dignity had seemed
beyond the danger of compromise; but with the decline
of her beauty and her removal from those spheres in
which she had been a person of inviolable eminence,
there was left her no protection but that of wealth: and
wealth does not insure dignity (127).
Her attraction to Paolo makes her
a woman, for he insults her; in their
when she demands of him to tell her
insults to her, his fingers press on her
gradually lose her dignity as
final clash in her apartment,
why he has said such awful
mouth, while he hisses:
You won't listen to me (. . . ) . You won't take any
warning. You are too puffed up w i h your glory, yourwealth, your magazine fashion-pictures, your wax-paper
king of a husband that left you his millions. But this is a
very old city. Rome is three thousand years old, and how
old are you? Fifty?
Fifty! she gasped.
It was that word that completed her undoing. Dignity she whispered to herse'f, but it was only the whis89LETRAS(28) 1979
pering of a word, caught up and swept away in the tempest of her fury (143).
Thus, in order to avoid the "drift" after she lost Paolo, Mrs. Stone
surrenders completely to degradation, by calling the obscene young
man to her apartment. We knew from the beginning that they were
going to meet. Therefore, physical decay is followed by moral decay.
Blanche loses her illusions of dignity through Stanley's crude exposure of her lies, her tricks, and her past, which culminates in his
raping her, as a symbol of her complete physical and spiritual surrender to the brutish forces of tru:h surrounding her. But her exit
with the doctor at the end of the play is dignified, for her slight
insaneness makes her think he is a new suitor, so she leaves with
dignity in contrast to Mrs. Stone's further decay.
As to both women's bearing, although Mrs. Stone is very often
compared to a prey bird, with a hawk-like expression in her eyes,
while Blanche is more like a moth, in her uncertainty of manner, both
resemble each other in their fright of the unknown future: Mrs. Stone,
when she was a'one and thought herself unobserved, always had a
"slightly frightened, anxious look" (34) in her pale blue eyes, while
Blanche's fright cannot be hidden even from her sister and brotherin-law. On several occasions, ihere is a "frrghtenend look", "almost
a look of panic" (192) on her face, under Stanley's insulting stare, and
his violent gestures ande speech. Nevertheless, in spite of their inner
frrght, both women try to start a new life in a new environment, as
mentioned. But while Mrs. Stone at the end of the story does consciously submit to degradation, in order to achieve this new life of
security through physical love, Blanche never really accepts her degrading rea'ity, for she only believes in what she wants to believe in.
As already quo:ed, "I don't tell the truth. I tell what ought to be
truth" (204). And this slight madness seems to give more dramatic
depth to her than Mrs. Stone has, for Blanche wants to make the
tragedy of life — in which things are as they are — become a comedy
— in which things are as they ought to be.
In this manner, w e hope to have shown through the discussion
of the two main charac'ers' attitudes toward love and decay, either
by pointing out their similarities or contrasts, some meaningful aspects of their complex personalities. At the same time, these attitudes
reveal some recurrent themes in Tennessee Williams' work, for even
if treated differently in each play or novel, both love and decay are
present in his oeuvre, as seminal aspects through which w e can try
90
LETRAS (28) 1979
lo explore the dark corners of man's personality, and the crises of
self-recognition that we must all pass through.
SUMMARY
This study attempts to present, briefly, two important aspects in the personalities
of Blanche Du Bois and Mrs. Stone, the heroines of Tennessee W i l l i a m s ' p l a y A Streeteli
Named Desire and his novelette The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone. Starting
general
impressions,
setting,
precedent
both wome's attitudes towards
action
and
plot,
the
study
with
then centers
love and decay, with their similarities and
on
contrasts,
es a means of obtaining a deeper insight into their complex personalities..
RESUMO
Este trabalho apresenta, de modo breve, dois aspectos importantes nas personalidades de Blanche Du Bois e Mrs. Stone, as heroinas respectivamente da peça A Stneetcar Named Desire e do romance The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone. Após mencionar impressões gerais, cenário, ação antecedente e enredo, este trabalha see concentra nas
atitudes de ambas as mulheres em relação ao amor e à decadência, com seus contrastes e semelhanças, de modo a obter uma visão mais profunda de suas personalidades
complexas.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES
WILLIAMS, T. The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone. New York, A New Directions Book,
1950.. 148 pp.
Ibid. A Streetcar Named Desire. Harmondsworth, Penguin Books. 1947. p. 113 10 226.
LETRAS (28) 1979
'115